Abstract
This article explores the influence of the learning environment on the second language acquisition of Swedish. Data were collected longitudinally over 1 year from 35 university students studying Swedish in Malmo, Sweden, and in Melbourne, Australia. Three areas were investigated: grammar, pragmatics, and lexicon. The development of grammar was analyzed within the framework of Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998, 2005). For the pragmatic analysis, the learners' production in a gap-filling task was measured against answers from 100 native speakers. A scoring system was devised to enable comparisons between learners and native speakers. The lexical analysis was based on a word association test. The results show that the grammar developed similarly in the two groups, whereas differences between the groups were found in pragmatics and lexicon. This variation is explained by differences in target language exposure.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 628-650 |
| Journal | Language Learning |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2010 |
Bibliographical note
The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015.The record was previously connected to the following departments: Linguistics and Phonetics (015010003)
Subject classification (UKÄ)
- Comparative Language Studies and Linguistics
Free keywords
- L2 Swedish
- pragmatics
- word association
- exposure
- L2
- Processability Theory
- language acquisition
- second versus foreign